I was flipping through the October 2011 edition of Parents. I don’t subscribe to the magazine, but it lured me in with its uber-smiley cover baby telling me I can make the most stellar Halloween costumes at home. I am not a crafty person. On the other hand, my five-year old daughter delights in all things glue, glitter, wood, stickers, markers, paint, clay, pipe-cleaners…[groan]. Still, I fell for the you-can-be-the-best-mom-in-the-world marketing, and started thumbing through the articles.

Page 148 of "Parents" Magazine: "Germy Jigglers" recipe

Page 148, the beginning of the cutesy Halloween party food recipes, actually made me nauseous for a bit. With movies like Contagion and  multi-drug resistant microbes proliferating, someone figured out what is really scary…colored gelatin-filled petri dishes covered in “germy” icing shapes.*

Yup. Please pass the licorice face mask and ghoulish hand wash.

I might ask my daughter to whip up a batch for my infection control, lab, and pathology colleagues. And as an aside, who knew you could buy petri dishes on Amazon?

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*Sorry, the recipe is not online currently. Swing by the news stand and check out the easy recipe for yourself.